


i told you something safe

by quidhitch



Category: DCU
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Juice Boxes, M/M, defiling of refrigerators, idiots to lovers, scrabble in a hospital bed, this is 1/3 Light angst and then 2/3 fluff, weirdly existential conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 11:39:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19228423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: “Don’t say that,” Bruce instructs gruffly. He feels a sharp lance of panic, because there’s no way to know if Clark means it differently than— than the most obvious interpretation, which is that of course they love each other. Of course they are as close as two people could possibly be, and of course a natural consequence of that bond is love. “You don’t have to. We’re not going to die.”Or: Clark is injured, and Bruce is there to see him through the recovery. Plus a little extra. Also, they're in love.





	i told you something safe

**Author's Note:**

> this is a little outside my usual range and i told myself for a long time that i wasn't a talented enough writer to execute the concept BUT... now im just going for it. idk if its very good, but thanks for reading anyways :)

Bruce has spent a lifetime learning how to fall.

He rehearses it as diligently as he does anything else, practicing each misstep so that it might achieve a certain effect in the moment. Brucie Wayne stumbles out of limousines with precisely measured clumsiness and Batman lands on his feet after blows dispensed by both gods and monsters. The unstable truth of the figure that rests between anticipates each mistake, braces for the resulting descent.

It doesn’t always go according to plan. Sometimes he falls and it does irreparable damage. Sometimes he falls and doesn’t get back up. Sometimes he falls and Clark catches him long before he can devise a proper way to land.

(It starts with a wash of green light, harsh and consuming, so bright Bruce sees it even when he closes his eyes. He’s knocked back off his feet and his body curves around the force. For a sliver of a second he’s weightless, but the moment is broken when he lands sharply on his back, the suit absorbing some of the blow. It was a crash too quick to have controlled, too unexpected to have prepared for.)

Sometimes, they fall together.

 

* * *

 

There’s a weight on top of him - a heavy, dead thing - and he’s struggling to breathe against the pressure on his chest. He frees one hand and shucks off the cowl, head turning to the side so he can suck in air that’s clouded with grime and dirt. Laying limp two inches from his face is a hand. Everything about it is familiar - from the perfect golden skin to the boyish jut of knuckles. Bruce’s chest floods with panic.

“Clark,” he says sharply. The thing on top of him - the heavy, dead thing - is Clark. He’s not getting up. Everything is cloaked in the sickly green glow of Kryptonite. Bruce reaches to feel for an injury on the back of Clark’s head. His fingers come away sticky with blood.

He draws together his fragmented understanding of the scene before him, attempting to come up with a viable plan of action. Something like a bomb had gone off, Clark had heard it start to go off, and had used his massive body to shield Bruce from the blow. Bruce trails his hand farther past Clark’s head, down the line of his spine—

And jerks back like he’s been burned. Shrapnel. Clark’s back is a mess of broken shards of kryptonite and torn skin. He wouldn’t be able to heal until each piece was painstakingly extracted.

“Clark,” Bruce says again, voice sharper still.

Finally — finally, the weight atop him shifts the slightest bit, and there’s a broken exhale in his ear. Bruce allows himself exactly three seconds to feel relieved. “Clark,” he says a third time. He realizes suddenly that the comms are busted, he hadn’t checked before, too busy drowning in the idea that Clark might be— “You have to stay awake. Someone will come.”

“Can’t move,” he mumbles. “On my— my legs—“

Debris, Bruce realizes. He can’t tilt his head and get a proper look, but there must be debris of some sort pinning down Clark’s legs. He could push it off with ease if he didn’t have god knew how much Kryptonite currently embedded in his back, but as is he can only twitch under the weight, jaw tightening in frustration.

Bruce understands with sinking certainty that there’s no way he can get them out of this. They have to wait for help. The rest of the league and members of the lantern corps are neutralizing a threat on the other side of the bay. Bruce and Clark had split off to respond to a distress beacon from a nearby building. They’d barely touched down by the doors before Clark had launched at him with a wide-eyed, panicked look, and the bomb had gone off.

It had been some kind of trap. Impossible to detect, impossible to _set_ — how could the perpetrator have known Clark would be the one to respond? It’s a mystery, and not one Bruce has the capacity to solve while he’s buried under rubble.

Eventually someone from the league will realize they’ve been gone too long — will discover they can’t be reached via comm. Someone will come.

“It’s going to be fine,” he says, swallowing around a dry throat. “Diana and the others are close by.”

Bruce keeps talking to Clark to keep him awake and responsive. He talks about the fight, he talks about his most recent case, and then Clark mumbles that all of these things are very boring, so he talks about swimming with the pigs in the Bahamas when he was ten.

Time passes — an hour, maybe, Bruce is too preoccupied with the slow rattle of Clark’s breath in his ear to keep track. At least some of his injuries must have been internal, if his lungs were having so much trouble. How much time did they have? What could be done? He would start picking out the Kryptonite with his bare hands if he could, but they’re too close, nestled together like lovers. From this position he can only reach a sliver of Clark’s back, and without proper visualization he doesn’t want to risk doing more damage.

“I love you.”

“Don’t say that,” Bruce instructs gruffly. He feels a sharp lance of panic, because there’s no way to know if Clark means it differently than— than the most obvious interpretation, which is that of course they love each other. Of course they are as close as two people could possibly be, and of course a natural consequence of that bond is love. “You don’t have to. We’re not going to die.”

Clark expels some kind of pained wheeze, and it takes a moment for Bruce to realize its his best attempt at a laugh.

“Stubborn,” he mumbles, lips brushing against the shell of Bruce’s ear. “Can’t I...”—a horrible, shuddering pause where Clark struggles to draw breath— “...just love you?”

Bruce closes his eyes. His face is wet. Maybe from Clark’s blood. There’s so much of it, running down his sides, soaking through his suit, staining Bruce’s hands.

“Stop talking. You need to preserve your strength.”

Clark hums, and even though the sound is so slight Bruce can barely hear it, he’s immediately certain it’s meant to placate him. Bleeding out and staring down imminent demise, Clark Kent still managed to be polite.

“I’m not saying it back,” Bruce tells him decisively, though his voice doesn’t hold quite as steady as he’d like it to, “and not because it wouldn’t be true, but because this is—...” 

_—supposed to go differently. I’m supposed to be old and retired, the one with the quiet voice and the shortness of breath. Your hand in mine, your head on my pillow. Everything is supposed to be different._

Bruce shoves the fantasy away with appropriate viciousness. It is astoundingly useless in this moment; it cannot remove the debris from Clark’s legs, it cannot extract the Kryptonite from his back, and it certainly cannot turn back time so that they might have traded words like these earlier, had a little more time to settle into the comfortable grooves of their meaning.

“You aren’t going to say ‘I love you’ and then die. There has to be more than that.”

“Okay,” Clark sighs, a soft exhale Bruce feels against the juncture of his neck. He has one arm beneath Bruce’s head, the other laying limply to the side. He flexes his fingers, and, with great difficulty, reaches for Bruce’s hand. Bruce grips him tight, as if trying to pass some of his own strength through the points of contact. “Alright.”

 

* * *

 

Diana is the one who pulls them both from the rubble. They hear her coming before they see her - her booming voice and heavy footfalls followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking stone. She barely looks human as she pulls the support beam from Clark’s legs with one hand.

They’re both taken back to the Watchtower. Bruce has a sizable shard of Kryptonite wedged in his thigh and his shoulder is dislocated. He allows Ollie to pop it back into place, and then there’s some minimal fussing with bandages and painkillers. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters, not when he can still feel the ghost of Clark’s too-faint breath against his skin.

He’s back at Clark’s side as soon as he can manage it, their hands clasped together as Leslie uses wicked sharp forceps to extract pieces of shrapnel from his back. Each scrap of green makes a soft clink as she drops it into a metal tin beside the bed. Clark bites down on a towel to muffle his own sounds of pain, but that doesn’t make hearing him any less blood-curdling. There is no anesthetic that’s a match for Clark’s metabolism, he simply has to endure this with the full weight of sensation. His eyes keep squeezing shut, barely visible through the pillow of his arms. Blood runs along the corded muscle of his waist.

“Almost done,” Leslie mutters, “almost done sweetheart.”

“After this,” Clark croaks. “You’re taking me to see the pigs.”

Bruce brushes back Clark’s hair, fingers skimming along the line of his already damp forehead. “Alright.”

“I’m not kidding around. Fire up the jet. Fifteen more minutes, right, Leslie?”

It was cruel of him to be so quintessentially himself, so perfectly, captivatingly Clark, in a moment when loving him could be nothing but painful. He sees that strife crease Leslie’s expression, her hands stalling above Clark’s back. “Just about,” she says, the strain in her voice apparent to anyone not currently under the influence of Kryptonite poisoning.

“Almost done,” Clark mumbles. He draws Bruce’s hand closer, presses his slack mouth against Bruce’s knuckles. “How ‘bout that?”

Bruce doesn’t reply, doesn’t trust himself not to say something horrific. He just watches Clark, and when Leslie goes back in with the forceps, he talks in a low voice about the coconut trees in the Bahamas. His words are barely audible over Clark’s muffled groans of pain, but the gradually increasing pressure of Clark’s grip keeps him focused.

Bruce sends a plane for Martha Kent and sits patiently at Clark’s bedside until she arrives. He’s exhausted after Leslie finishes, barely able to keep his eyes open as they roll his gurney to a private room. His back is too sore to sleep on, so he lies on his stomach with arms wrapped around the plushest pillow Diana could find in a five mile radius. He watches Bruce with dimly present blue eyes, something so young and unassuming about the way his face is half-tucked into his shoulder.

“Go to sleep,” Bruce tells him, maybe a thousand different times in a thousand different ways. “Your mother is on her way.”

Clark nods slightly in recognition but still teeters on the edge of rest, eyes stubbornly open as if he’s making some sort of audacious statement. Or choosing a very strange moment to initiate a staring contest. In any case, Bruce doesn’t understand, and falls asleep first for his troubles.

Leslie mandates fifty-two hours of bed rest, even though they all know Clark will return to full capacity by twelve. Bruce thinks the extra time might be for psychological reasons — it had been a while since Clark was confronted so blatantly with his own mortality. Bruce himself feels slightly off center whenever he thinks about it, and in the immediate days after the explosion, it’s nice to have a close-by camera feed he can use to ascertain the status of Clark’s safety at any given moment.

Clark predictably has round-the-clock visitors, but his mother is the steadiest presence by his side. She takes an hour’s reprieve in the evening when Bruce brings Clark Scrabble and dinner from a Michelin star restaurant. He’d called earlier to place Clark’s order. The conversation was appalling on many different levels.

(“What are you getting?”

“The charcoaled octopus.”

“That sounds terrible. You’re going to be eating burnt tentacles in front of me?”

“Just let me order for you.”

“Don’t be rude.” Bruce could hear the smile in Clark’s voice as he drawled, “hey, are you absolutely sure they don’t have chicken strips?”)

He can rest on his back now, though the bed’s been outfitted with no less than six pillows in an attempt to keep him as cushioned as possible. Ma Kent is a force of nature.

“Only words in English,” Clark tells Bruce as he sets up the board. Most of the color has returned to his cheeks, and he’s smiling with his whole face today, not just his eyes. “No Norwegian, no Urdu, no Hausa—“

“Fine,” Bruce concedes, delicately unwrapping the tinfoil swan with the foie gras. “But you aren’t allowed to play ‘IHOP.’”

“IHOP is a word.”

“No Hausa for me, no inane abbreviations for you.”

Clark is grinning too hard to even feign indignity, “I was nominated for a Pulitzer.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees, “You are also utterly insufferable when you want to be.”

Clark shrugs in concession and sits up a little straighter as Bruce slides him a plate of Colorado Lamb and Swiss Chards. He picks up his fork and pokes interestedly at it.

“You’ll like it.”

“Did you bring dessert?”

“Yes,” Bruce dismisses, exasperated, “But eat the lamb. If you don’t like it, I’ll allow IHOP.”

Clark sections off a bite with his fork and pops it into his mouth, eyes going comically wide. “Holy moly,” he mutters, considering his plate in fascination. “What is _in_ this? Crack?”

“Butter. Are we allowed to use slang or colloquialisms?”

“Such as...?”

“I don’t know. Fuck, maybe.”

“Bruce Wayne,” Clark looks up from his plate with a crooked smile. “My mother is two floors away, quit trying to goad me into playing x-rated Scrabble.”

“Please,” Bruce scoffs, leaning back in his flimsy plastic chair. “You don’t know enough x-rated terms to get through a full game of Scrabble. Twenty minutes in and you’d be trying to play ‘PMHH’.” Clark shoots him a look of confusion, and Bruce’s mouth twitches into a smile, “Pre-marital hand-holding.”

Clark flicks a pea at Bruce for that, and then immediately feels bad about “making a mess” and has Bruce go hunt it down.

For dessert, they split a flourless chocolate cake, which means Bruce takes exactly one bite and Clark devours the rest far too quickly to achieve any sort of culinary appreciation. He has a little bit of chocolate at the corner of his mouth as he settles back against his enclave of pillows.

Bruce wonders if he could—

They _did_ say that they were—

He keeps his hands folded neatly on his lap.

 

* * *

 

They’ve moved Clark from the Watchtower back to his apartment. His mother hopped on a commercial flight to Kansas early morning, though Bruce offered the jet at least six times. Clark’s going to visit her for the weekend and they have plans to see some sort of can’t-miss annual reenactment of Smallville’s founding. The kids from the middle school play the parts, the English teacher writes the script, stay at home Moms make costumes. It sounds uniquely nauseating to Bruce, but Clark’s whole face lights up when he talks about it, which is... less nauseating.

Before she takes off, Martha leaves him a voicemail saying Clark has slept a cumulative half hour the past two nights. Every time she approached his bedside he feigned rest, but she tells him in a wry voice that she’s been able to see through that trick since he was fourteen. She says she doesn’t know if she ought to be worried, or if that’s a normal reaction to something like this. And then she asks Bruce to take care of him— “check in on him, if you can, he trusts you an awful lot.”

When he visits Clark in the evening, the veracity of his mother’s observations is proven ten times over. Clark’s face doesn’t bare the same traces of exhaustion that other people’s do, but there’s something different about his voice, and he laughs a little too loud, like he’s trying to cover something up.

Even as he stretches out on his couch, cutting the quintessential figure of relaxation in basketball shorts and a sweatshirt that announces ‘Martha Kent’s Annual Jam-boree!’, Bruce can tell there’s something not quite right about the picture.

“Budgeting,” Clark repeats, frowning at the Scrabble board. He takes a noisy sip from his juicebox.

Bruce came straight from work, so he’s still wearing slacks and a cashmere sweater. The people in the Wendy’s drive-thru had been stunned when his town car pulled up to the window, but he’d passed it off well as an eccentric billionaire thing.

(He’d thought it might be a nice gesture, to get Clark chicken strips.)

Bruce straightens his wristwatch, eyeing Clark critically, “Budgeting is a word.”

Clark rolls his eyes, “I know it’s a word, Bruce, I was just thinking it’s kind of a boring one.”

“There are no rules about my word choices entertaining you and I’ve been reading budget reports all afternoon. Focus on the game.”

Clark smiles around the straw of his juice box and sets it delicately on a coaster — a residual habit from having his mom in the house, Bruce would presume. He considers the tiles in front of him, a small wrinkle of concentration manifesting between his brows. He places a D, then pauses, and in quick succession a Y, an I, and a N. The word is completed by the ‘G’ on Bruce’s ‘budgeting’.

Bruce’s gaze flicks up off the board.

“It’s funny,” Clark says. He half reaches for his juice box in an aborted movement, then smooths his hands over his basketball shorts instead. “Because I was dying.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything, though the list of potential words running through his head comes to an abrupt halt. He sets his Scrabble piece down on the coffee table and watches Clark with the acumen of someone who’s spent the last several years carefully uncovering the actual human being beneath that perpetual veneer of perfect politeness.

“I was dying,” Clark repeats, as if he’s just realized it to be true.

He looks at Bruce with somber blue eyes and presses his hand over his mouth. “I was... dying,” he says a third time, and Bruce gets up off his plastic chair and goes to sit next to Clark on the couch. He’s never been good at this part, but he’s always the person Clark wants to talk to anyway. His cross to bear, he supposes.

Clark rests against the back of the couch, tips his head to look at the ceiling, “I don’t have a will.”

“We could get you one.”

“Do I need an attorney? I don’t have an attorney, either.”

“You can use mine.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Clark tips his head to the side, peers at Bruce with curious blue eyes. “Do you have a will?”

“I have six kids.”

“Ah. Right.” Clark is quiet for a long time, then, and his expression is completely placid, which means he’s midway through a spiral of thoughts which are far too morbid to say out loud.

Out of nowhere, there are tears gathering at the corners of Clark’s eyes. Not enough to signify something as dramatic as sobbing, but rather the light ghost of dampness that typically manifests whenever Clark watches that drunk driving PSA with the dog waiting for its owner to come home.

“I have been dying so many different times,” he says, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. He leans forward like Bruce, considering his knees with pointed interest, “Why is this different? Why is this— hitting me so differently?”

Bruce can’t come out and say things like Clark can. Even before the rather morbid goings-on of his adolescent years, his parents were WASPs through and through. If there was ever to be anything like expression of emotion, it should be done elegantly, with the same grace and control one might put towards a spirited game of chess. Alfred had the routine perfected. Bruce preferred not to engage with it at all.

He makes an exception for Clark. He’s perhaps always making exceptions for Clark.

“A year or so after I took in Dick, we had a scare like this one.” Clark is peering at him with sad, curious eyes. Bruce can’t quite muster the strength to meet his gaze. “I got stuck with the business end of a blade dipped in poison. Alfred identified and administered the antidote, but I had— I don’t know, maybe minutes left to live. And for the first time in God knows how long, I was petrified to die.”

He knows the rest is implied— that he’d torn through the previous decade with absolutely no regard for the value of his own life, that he’d spent his late teens and early twenties standing right on the line of total self-destruction, just waiting for a particularly strong breeze to blow him over. The finer details of that period are best left unvisited.

“The toxin gave me these really gruesome hallucinations, but every time I got ahold of my own mind, all I could think was what it would mean for Dick to lose another person. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to leave him.” He forces himself to look at Clark now, to reach out and gently take hold of the back of Clark’s neck, thumb resting carefully at the edge of his jaw. “Our lives expand and grow so that they might fit around the new things we introduce to them. Maybe you are so afraid to die because you have more to live for than ever before.”

Bruce means to let go now. Any second and he’s going to draw back, recede to the other end of the couch, maybe ask Clark if he wants to wash that juicebox down with a little scotch, superpowered metabolism be damned. That’s what he’s doing. Imminently. That is the plan.

None of that is actually happening. He is still touching Clark, and Clark is sort of leaning into him, not-quite crying as he considers Bruce’s words. Then they’re melting into each other, and Clark is tucked up against Bruce’s side, and Bruce has an arm around his shoulders. The wetness from Clark’s eyes now dabs against 100% cashmere. They’ve never touched like this— out side of the gory incident which brought them to this point in the first place, this sort of sustained, tender contact is almost entirely foreign to their relationship. All of Clark is pressed up all along Bruce’s side. It’s breathtaking. Or, at least, Bruce would allow it to be breathtaking if it wasn’t abundantly clear that Clark needed an anchor right now, rather than some sort of fluttery pining idiot.

“Thank you for coming,” Clark mutters, and Bruce looks down just in time to see his eyes drift closed. “And thank you for bringing Wendy’s.”

“Go to sleep, Clark.”

“You go to sleep.”

“Fine,” Bruce sighs, and settles more thoroughly against the back of the couch, though he’s loudly and frequently expressed the opinion that he thinks the thing is some sort of health code violation. “Let’s see who can get to sleep faster.”

Clark’s still smiling as his breathing evens out, and he falls into a deep, quiet sleep against Bruce’s chest. Bruce watches his eyelashes fan gorgeously along his cheekbones, and knows with utter certainty that he must only allow himself one night of this, if he has any hope of maintaining control over the burgeoning feeling in his chest.

 

* * *

 

Clark opens the door and the first thing Bruce does is hand him a crisp Manila folder, expression teeming with self satisfaction.

“I figured it out,” he says, and Clark doesn’t react at all, just steps aside so that Bruce can come in.

Bruce shrugs off his pea coat and hangs it on Clark’s wobbly rack. “I gathered as much shrapnel from the blast zone as possible and irradiated the sample. It containedtraces of an element that only naturally takes a stable form in about ten places in the world. From there it was just tracking the companies doing research in those areas. Itex Enterprises was one of them. It’s a shell company easily traced back to LexCorp. Luthor made and planted the bomb.”

Clark is leaning up against his kitchen counter, still completely silent. Bruce has the niggling feeling that something might be wrong, but figures Clark will get over it, or he’ll have to, anyways, with the rest of Bruce’s news.

“There’s more,” Bruce continues, grim. He undoes the buttons at the end of his sleeves and rolls each up to his elbows. “The bomb that went off - it wasn’t the only one Luthor had. He had plants in at least three other buildings. He couldn’t have been sure which distress beacon you’d respond to. He still has them, which is the main thing, really. We need to put together a mission to bring them in.”

Clark still isn’t saying anything. Bruce’s file sits unopened on the counter. Instead, Clark holds a carton of Chinese takeout in one hand and a cold egg roll in the other, fixing Bruce with this face of nothingness that he has absolutely no idea what to do with.

Bruce tucks his hands in his pockets and raises one eyebrow. “Are you going to use your words?”

And that at least spurs a sliver of a reaction, a minute twitch of Clark’s jaw that’s only recognizable because Bruce has spent innumerable hours memorizing the lines of his face.

“I haven’t heard from you in a week.”

Bruce blinks. “I’ve been busy with this. I thought you might need some rest.”

“I did,” Clark says quietly. He takes off his stupid fake glasses so he can rub at the bridge of his nose. “I did need rest.”

“Okay then,” Bruce replies, but remains puzzled because everything on Clark’s face and body says Bruce has done something wrong.

Clark stares at him for several dragging seconds, as if attempting to telepathically communicate his own thoughts. Bruce is missing something. And it’s something very obvious, given the exasperated tilt of Clark’s mouth.

“Is this what you meant by ‘more’?”

Bruce fixes Clark with a narrow-eyed gaze. “Excuse me?”

“You said ‘you can’t just say I love you and die. There has to be more.’ Is this really what you meant? Because, I’ll be honest, Bruce, this feels a hell of a lot like the same stuff we had before.”

“Clark Kent,” Bruce says, incredulous as he ventures further into Clark’s apartment, the cheap linoleum of his kitchen floors creaking under Bruce’s dress shoes. “I just told you there is an impending threat on your life. Luthor has two more Kryptonite bombs that he could plant anywhere at any time. We need to contact the league, draw up plans to break into LexCorp—“

“Shut up,” Clark interrupts, and Bruce actually does, blinking in momentary surprise. Clark is passive aggressive when he wants to be, but he’s never been quite so forthright about his desire that Bruce stop speaking. “There are always threats on my life. There are always more league missions. I’m asking you about what you said to me a week and a half ago.”

Bruce is silent, jaw working in frustration. Clark looks achingly human just standing at his kitchen counter like this, barefoot in a ratty flannel and surrounded by enough takeout to feed a small army. The simple beauty of him is arresting. Through Clark’s anger he can see slivers of hope and anticipation; brittle, breakable things that Bruce’s hands, no matter how agile, will never feel qualified to handle.

Too many minutes of empty quiet pass between them. Clark’s face crumples and he sets the egg roll on the counter, reaching for the Manila folder only so he can hand it back to Bruce.

“Just go. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“Clark—“

“And If Lex Luthor blows me up sometime in the next six hours, I promise you can inscribe ‘I told you’ so on my tombstone.”

“ _Clark_ —"

“What?” Clark’s eyes meet his, hurt and exhaustion written plainly on his face, and Bruce thinks — _fuck. This is it. If I don’t claim this now, I lose it forever._

“Just—be quiet for a moment.”

At first Clark looks vaguely offended, but the expression gives way to confusion as Bruce steps closer and fits his palm against the plane of Clark’s cheek. Clark has gone very, very still, as if Bruce is some sort of skittish deer and the slightest movement might send him running.

“This is what you want?” Bruce asks.

“Yes,” Clark returns with absolute certainty, and Bruce has a hard time denying Clark much of anything these days, so he hooks one hand behind Clark’s neck and brings their mouths together in a bruising kiss.

Everything is a perfect mess of roaming hands and flushed skin— Clark’s touch brings a warmth that activates every one of Bruce’s senses. Kissing him feels inevitable. Kissing him feels like something they might’ve done a long, long time ago.

Clark makes a soft sound and pulls back slightly. “I— I mean,” he stutters through swollen lips, “How did you... how was that?”

Even as he thinks he might’ve just seen through space and time, Bruce manages to raise an eyebrow. “Are you really asking me for a progress report right now?”

Clark squints critically at Bruce, which would be marginally more intimidating if he was also able to stifle his grin. Bruce barely has time to ponder how ridiculous and cute the expression is before they’re kissing again, and most brain functions grind to an abrupt halt.

Clark makes a gorgeous, muffled sound and slams Bruce back against the dingy refrigerator, cheap magnets and postcards clattering to the floor. His mouth moves from Bruce’s lips to his neck, and Bruce is suddenly worried that it will call back to being buried under the rubble, to Clark dying on top of him— but it’s immediately apparent that won’t be a problem. Like this, Clark is unquestionably alive; a warm, biting presence against his pulse. Bruce makes a soft noise of surprise when Clark gets his hands under Bruce’s thighs hitching them up around his waist, lifting him clean off the ground. Bruce grips broad shoulders for purchase, wrapping himself firmly around Clark as he adjusts to the change in altitude.

It’s just the right height to— And, god, even through layers of clothes, it feels so—

“I have a bed,” Clark groans, and the breathy note to his voice shivers pleasantly up Bruce’s spine. He doesn’t stop grinding his hips gracelessly against Bruce’s, their cocks lined up just right. This is enough, Bruce realizes, surprise piercing through the haze of lust clouding his mind. I could come, just from this.

“Later,” Bruce pants. “Don’t stop.”

Clark buries his face in Bruce’s neck, and for a while the only sounds are their grunts and quickening breath, plus the rattle of the likely irreparable damage they’re doing to Clark’s refrigerator. Clark exhales a harsh, helpless noise when he comes, losing control of his rhythm and biting down on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce tangles a hand in his hair, tips their foreheads together, and waits for him to stop shaking.

Clark is reaching between them, now, holding Bruce up with _one hand_ as he makes for the button of Bruce’s already ruined slacks. “Can I…?” he asks, lips skimming the shell of Bruce’s ear, and the sound goes straight to Bruce’s aching cock. He can barely get it together enough to nod before Clark is reaching down, past the hem and past his briefs, soft hand wrapping tight around him, thumb swiping experimentally at the slit.

Clark jacks him sloppy and rough, Bruce angling to meet him thrust for thrust. It isn’t long before he’s slamming his head back against the freezer, black clouding his vision as he comes against the rough movement of Clark’s palm. Clark presses languid kisses to his jaw, works him right up to the edge of oversensitivity. He backs off just as Bruce is about to bat his hand away, wipes his fingers absently on Bruce’s thousand dollar sweater.

For a moment, everything is quiet. Bruce’s attention snags on a polaroid they knocked to the floor, a cheesy Selfie of Clark and Kara making peace signs. The reality of what they just did — the irreversible changing of one of the most important relationships in his life — starts to sink in. He straightens his neck to look at Clark, who is already worriedly scanning his face.

“Sorry,” Clark says, pressing a kiss under Bruce’s ear.

“Sorry?” Bruce repeats, slightly ashamed of the way his knee wobbles as Clark finally sets him down. “You’re apologizing for giving me an orgasm?”

“I might’ve given you a concussion,” Clark brings his hand up to cradle the back of Bruce’s head. “Do you know what day it is?”

Bruce rolls his eyes, still vaguely aware that his legs might give out on him at any moment. He still has an arm wrapped loosely around Clark’s neck, and uses the opportunity to push his fingers back into Clark’s hair, which is even softer and smoother than he thought it’d be. “You did not concuss me with your dick,” he says decisively.

Clark remains skeptical.

They eventually make their way to the shower, and Bruce gets Clark off once more with the water pouring down both their backs, the tiles making indents in Bruce’s knees. It’s so hot that it almost crowds out Bruce’s consciousness of just how tiny and drab Clark’s bathroom is. The prospect of taking him back to the Manor, of doing this where they’ll have a little more room, has anticipation rising quick in the hollow of Bruce’s chest.

Bruce stays for dinner, shrugging on spares of Clark’s clothes. They are obnoxiously too big and put a positively lovelorn look on Clark’s face as the two of them amble around the kitchen, but it’s perhaps worth it for the fact that while he’s wearing them Clark can’t seem to stop touching him.

Or maybe that’s just the new norm for the both of them. Uncharted territory all around.

“You were going to eat all of this by yourself?” Bruce asks, considering the 8 pints of Americone Dream currently lined up in Clark’s freezer.

Clark makes a face like he’s desperately holding back a laugh in the hope of maintaining the high ground. He moves closer and shoves harmlessly at Bruce’s shoulder, reaching around him to close the freezer with a decisive thump. “For your information, I was wallowing.”

“You should spend less time with Kara.”

“You are not allowed to judge, especially after Stephanie put the word ‘hella’ in yourevery day vocabulary.”

“So theatrical. I used it once, at most.”

“Twice! And both experiences haunt me to this day.”

Bruce rolls his eyes with a smile, swipes one of the takeout containers off Clark’s counter and settles into a stool. Yet another order of orange chicken. Clark truly had the diet and general living habits of a horny college student. They’d be working on that, in the coming months.

“So,” Clark says, setting a pair of chopsticks down in front of Bruce. He’s leaning on the counter, elbows braced in front of him, eyes a playful, shining blue.

“So,” Bruce agrees. He tears the paper tip off the chopstick packet and breaks them apart with a satisfying crack. Bruce taught Clark how to use chopsticks in the first month of their partnership, too horrified to watch him continue to decimate sushi with a fork. Even then, he had been fascinated with the shape and feel of Clark’s hands. They were a moving contradiction — huge and firm with muscle even as his impervious skin protected against any sort of callus or roughness. He might as well have spent the first 28 years of his life wearing lace gloves like a Victorian lady, for all the smooth, perfect softness of his palms.

“We’re doing this?” Clark asks, stubborn hope holding his voice together. It makes Bruce desperately want to not ruin this, despite being preternaturally disposed to losing things that make him happy.

“I have plans,” he says, chewing pensively on a piece of orange chicken.

Clark breaks out into a toothy, ear-to-ear smile. He sets a box of fried rice on the glass countertop, and leans over to press a sweet kiss on Bruce’s mouth. “Plans,” he repeats, close enough that their noses brush. “Sounds real good to me.”

Bruce captures one of those paradoxical hands in his and laces their fingers together, “Yes, I thought it would.”

**Author's Note:**

> tell me what you thought below? how did i pull off this meager attempt at Angst? @ quidhitch on tumblr


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